GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION. 475 



municipalities hus restored his power. Even since the judicial reforms of 18G4 

 he has not been deprived of an exorbitant privilege analogous to that of the 

 lettres de cachet under the old French réo-ime. 



Except in Poland and in the Baltic Provinces, already possessing their feudal 

 Diets, an instalment of representative government was everywhere introduced in 

 1864 by the creation of the Zemstvo, or provincial Parliaments, analogous to the 

 German Landtag. In these Zemstvo (from Zemlia /and) the deputies belong to all 

 classes — nobles, citizens, traders, peasants — and hold their sittings in three distinct 

 chambers, or curiae. The first, or assembly of landed proprietors, consists of owners 

 of estates averaging from 550 to 1,780 acres according to the provinces, of delegates 

 of proprietors with at least 55 acres, and of representatives of the clergy as holders 

 of ecclesiastical lands. The second, or assembly of burgesses, comprises merchants, 

 traders, and manufacturers doing a trade of at least 6,000 roubles, house owners, 

 and representatives of industrial associations disposing of a fixed capital. Lastly, 

 the third curia, that of the rural communes, includes the delegates of the peasantry, 

 elected at second hand — that is, by the members of the bailiwicks, who are them- 

 selves named by the peasantry at the rate of one for eyevy group of ten families. 

 The presidency of the first curia belongs to the marshal of the nobles, of the 

 second to the mayors of the towns, of the third to the officials employed in the 

 administration of rural affairs, the president in chief of the Zemstvo being always 

 the marshal of the nobles, except where specially appointed by the Czar. The 

 first two bodies are chosen from their respective classes, but the peasantry may 

 elect nobles or priests to represent them, and the number of deputies is every- 

 where calculated in such a way as to leave tbe rural classes in a minority. 



The sessions are very short, the district Zemstvo sitting only for ten days in 

 the year, while the delegates chosen by it for the provincial Zemstvo meet annually 

 in the chief town for twenty days only. But every three jears the assemblies 

 name an i(prava, or administrative committee, whose president must be approved 

 by the governor or minister, who has also the power of suspending all decisions 

 of the Zemstvo which he may consider contrary to the laws or the good of the 

 state. The range of subjects of which these bodies can take cognisance is, 

 moreover, very limited, and becomes yearly more restricted by ministerial injunc- 

 tions. 



The municipal institutions have passed through an evolution analogous to that 

 of the Zemstvo. Under the old régime the interests of the boroughs were looked 

 after by a duma, or council, chosen by the traders and burgesses {uneshc/iane), and 

 in certain grave contingencies the general electoral body decided, jN^ow the 

 Government has attempted to fuse all classes in the urban, as it has in the 

 provincial administration. St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, first received a new 

 municijaal organization resembling that of the Zemstvo, and in 1870 the munici- 

 palities were reconstituted in nearly all the towns of the empire. The urban 

 electors are divided into three curiae, according to the amount of their taxes, each 

 group appointing for four years an equal number of deputies {glasmije, from 

 glas, " vote "). These, constituting t he duma, name in their turn, also for four years, 



